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#the first chapters are far less of a slog and far more interesting upon the second read fyi
konstantya · 3 years
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My hands worked surely with the pencil and brushes and paints, yet my eyes would keep turning to where Harry lay stretched, long-legged and strong of body, in the sun.  So still and relaxed he lay, yet so full of vigour and life, that I could almost mark the swift stir of blood in the veins of his freckled hands and arms where the fine hairs were yellower than on his sandy head.  Under the white cotton material of his shirt his chest rose and fell, rose and fell, with unbroken regularity.  I paused in my painting, and my cheeks began to burn with something far more potent than that home-brewed wine.
Rachel Field, And Now Tomorrow (in which the protagonist suddenly finds herself SUPER THIRSTY for her boyfriend, bless)
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botanyshitposts · 6 years
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I wanna get into botany but textbooks and shit are hard to reead fuck I just see walls of words how do I read that shit
ok this actually isn’t the first ask ive gotten about this recently!! textbooks are a severely underrated class of book, but also take a lot of practice and finesse to read at first. 
something that i’ve discovered about textbooks- and this is one of those things that i wish someone had told me and i ended up finding out on my own- is that there are two types of textbooks: 1. the books that you have to buy for class to teach you the basics, or 2. compilations of current stuff on a specific topic
a thing ive noticed about being an undergrad/learning the basics is that ur essentially catching up with the rest of the world, and that’s how all the textbooks u gotta spend like $314231 on at the beginning of the year on are written. so the type one books are structured on teaching you things, which means that each chapter is structured in a cumulative lesson that you have to read all the way through, sometimes slugging through pages upon pages of just…..shit, because you need to know whats on page 9 to be able to understand whats on page 32. these books suck ass. theyre essential and very painful but once you get through them you can get to the cool type of textbook, type 2. 
type 2 textbooks are a weird thing academia does where they get a shitton of scientists together and have everybody write down the new shit they learned, and then they put it in a big overview book. these are kinda few and far between, but are super cool because due to it being just a giant compilation of individual results put together into one giant stack, if you arent interested in what ur reading you can literally just skip it and go to the next cool passage. nobody gives a shit and nothings building on anything else so if you dont understand one, you might understand another better, and u can skip around in the chapters as you please, which makes it SO much easier to read. the best example of this i own is Carnivorous Plants: Physiology, Ecology, and Evolution, which is the newest non-school textbook i own (published last february) and by far one of my faves even though i just got it (side note- some people have told me that they think its super interesting but are hesitant at the price tag and i would like to clarify that i saw this, it cost me Quite A Few Hours At Work, and because im going into the field, dont own any plants at all right now aside from one (1) fern, and had my birthday very recently i am giving myself CONSIDERABLE leeway on my book budget lmao). 
on a similar note: books like this are more expensive because the newer a text is, the more expensive it is because of the demand for new shit. a book 5 years out of date will cost about $20, and a book 10 years out of date will cost $8, and antique books usually cost around $2 lmao. on the flip side, the type 1 botany textbook required for my formal class this semester was bought used for me by my mom for by birthday a few years ago in high school, and cost about $90; books being used by any university for a class immediately jump in price, and books with new editions just released will cost SIGNIFICANTLY less than their counterparts. your best bet in some of these cases is a university library, but i digress lol 
as for botany textbooks for class and how to read them- again, start at the beginning of the chapter and slug through, because you gotta build up a knowledge base. if you’re taking a formal class, then lecture will most likely cover what chapters are assigned, so usually with my undergrad ones i listen intently and take notes in class, then supplement with my textbook by reading the parts that i’m confused on. when i need to read a type 1 textbook, i implement the method i used in high school to pass my AP courses: right when class gets out and i’m still in the ‘We Are Focusing Right Now Yes’ mindset, i sit myself down and dont get up until the chapter is read. this is sometimes more effective than other times. In terms of understanding the material, i find it helps if you look for how the concept you’re learning about is applied irl in studies and stuff, because if gives u a handle on it and brings to light what you do and don’t understand. on a more basic study habit level, if you’re like me and have ADHD but aren’t medicated, if i know i have to Focus ™ i take a caffeine pill or drink coffee in the morning and then try not to eat a ton of sugar until after i’m done studying, because it makes me feel frazzled. really, a lot of ‘learning the basics’ textbook reading is sitting down and slogging through it. 
in type 2 books, i usually flag the pages that i find interesting with little sticky note flags, because it gives my brain a background task of ‘hhhhh find place to put colorful item yes’. 
if you’re experiencing executive dysfunction with the intimidation of reading Big Important Thing: this sounds stupid, but think of it as a long online article. like when you open ur book for ur chapter be like ‘yeah just gonna read this wikipedia page now’. like i’ve learned that when applying an online layout, my brain is like ‘ah yes short and good and will remain focused now’, but when working in a book format- even in an online textbook- my brain immediately goes offline because ‘No!!! Big Stressful Chunk Of Text Gives Me Anxiety. Do Not Like’. i do this while encouraging myself to read regular books, too (*opens horror novel* ‘wow this is a pretty long creepypasta huh’). 
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videogametim · 5 years
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The Best (Not 2018) Games I Played in 2018
It’s getting closer to the time of the year where I write my GOTY list, but evidently those aren’t the only games that I played during the past year. I’d like to take some time to gush about some of the games I really enjoyed and had missed until now. 
Divnity: Original Sin II
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Divinity: Original Sin II has two things it really exceeds at doing, the first of which is a strong sense of creative freedom. In the narrative there are plenty of opportunities to make meaningful choices and lots of dialogue choices to go with them. There’s a whole pile of different selectable skills and character background options that affect dialogue and help cater your adventure to the type of character you are trying to build. 
However, where this creative freedom really shines is during combat. There are plenty of battle skills that amplify each other and allow your player character (and party) to be as over powered as you can imagine. For example, one particular combo features two abilities from different classes called Rupture Tendons (a Scoundrel skill) and Chicken Claw (a Metamorph skill). Chicken Claw turns the target enemy into a Chicken that spends its turns running around senselessly. Rupture Tendons is a skill that causes enemies to take damage whenever they move. On top of combinations like that, there’s also a whole host of elemental spells and hazards (Oil, Fire, Poison, Water, Earth, Lightning, ice, etc.) that all work together in some way (e.g. Fire ignites Oil, Water puts out Fire and creates Steam, etc.)
What’s more, while each AI party member has classes they are inclined to build around, you can tell any of them to build however you like if you have a certain build in mind. This really serves to encourage replayability despite the game taking me 100 hours to beat. 
With the exception of one chapter in particular that wasn’t much fun, the game never felt like a slog. No area is too big for its own good, and there is plenty of fantastic writing sprinkled throughout. Every selectable party member is very compelling and wanting to see all their stories to their conclusion grants all the more reason to play the game again and try something new. 
Rez Infinite
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Perhaps the driving force behind me picking up a VR headset this year was Rez Infinite. An HD remake of a psychadelic rail shooter from 2001 with VR support, Rez Infinite was really the game that solidified my purchase of a PSVR as a sound decision. 
Produced by Tetsuya Mizuguchi (producer of Space Channel 5, the Lumines series, and this year’s Tetris Effect), music is very much a core part of the experience. Each area’s music has a very different feel from the last and each track serves as a great backdrop to surfing through the cyber world, tilting your head to look around and shoot the enemies and massive bosses that fly at you. Also new to Infinite is the new Area X, which I still find to be one of the coolest VR experiences I have encountered thus far. I highly recommend anyone picking up a VR headset to make sure this game is on their list.
Enter the Gungeon
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While still a very recent pickup of mine, I’m absolutely loving Enter the Gungeon. The last run-based/rogue-like/rogue-lite/THAT type of game that I was really into was the original release of The Binding of Isaac, and even that wasn’t on my mind as much as Gungeon currently is.
The gameplay is pretty straight forward top-down twin-stick shooter gameplay with a whole lot of bullet hell, so what really sets it apart is the whole [GUN] motif. Each level is a chamber, each elevator is shaped like a bullet, weapons and items are detailed in the Ammonomicon which you shoot open, your projectile clearing items are Blanks, etc. The sheer creativity present in most of the guns you find scratches that same itch I’ve been missing since Borderlands. I’ve only put about 6 hours into it thus far but I look forward to spending many more.
Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove
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This was also the year that I finally got around to playing Shovel Knight and I finally see what all the rage was about. Shovel Knight is nothing short of rock-solid platforming gameplay. Level design features varying degrees of difficulty but is ultimately fair, and most of the boss fights prove to be pretty fun. The world map is very reminisciant of Super Mario Bros. 3 even down to the occasional roaming characters (like THE BAZ) that appear and challenge you if you run into them. 
The overall story of the base game isn’t really much to write home about, but this is greatly imrpoved upon in the two expansions. Plague of Shadows, which features the boss Plague Knight as the playable character, has a fun/goofy story revolving around him and his assistant Mona defeating the other characters to steal their essence. It runs as an alternate timeline to the base game and in my opinion the best story of the three, though Plague Knight is unfortunately the most awkward one to play due to the need to constantly pause the action. 
Specter of Torment takes place before the main campaign, and has you playing as Specter Knight, visiting each area to recruit all the bosses who fight Shovel Knight in the base game. The story is once again a lot less light-hearted, but Specter Knight proves to be the most fun character to play thanks to certain abilities he can obtain, most notable the abilitiy to grind on surfaces with his scythe.
Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is an incredible package for anyone looking to grab a fantastic sidescrolling platformer and I’m really looking forward to the King Knight expansion coming next year.   
Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep
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Perhaps the game that surprised me most this year was Birth By Sleep. I started out playing it slowly over several months, and it wasn’t until I was at the end of the story for the first playable character, Terra, until it all finally clicked for me. After that I banged out the rest of the game in a couple of weeks. Now it easily sits as my favourite Kingdom Hearts game behind KHII. 
Like the other spinoff titles so far, BBS has a unique twist on its gameplay and this time it serves to reward experimentation. Your usual command menu is replaced with a rotating deck of equippable abilities that get put on cooldowns, rather than consume MP. This means that I spent a whole lot more time in even regular battles using fun magic and physical spells instead of constantly holding back in order to conserve MP for something more important. What’s more is these abilities can be levelled up and then fused into new more powerful abilities. This was also finally the game I did my first playthrough on Proud Mode, and boy did it not disappoint in making certain later bossfights incredibly difficult and satisfying to defeat. By the time I was done with the game, I was actually a little disappointed knowing that going forward, I probably wouldn’t be seeing these combat mechanics again. 
Like most Kingdom Hearts games, the overall story does get a little confusing to follow at times, but it offers a really interesting setting of the worlds before the events of KHI. It also really sold me on the three new characters of Terra, Ventus, and Aqua and I am as invested in them as I am in Sora, Riku, and Kairi going into the rest of the series. BBS does plenty of setup for the events that follow in the previous games and its fun to see the fanservice of certain characters when they were younger. 
BIrth By Sleep has really got me invested in Kingdom Hearts again, and I’m motivated to finally start the II.8 collection in preperation for KHIII finally coming out next month. 
Conclusion
I’m glad I had a lot of time to play some really great games this year, and I hope to finish the last few games I need to before writing my GOTY list. 
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murasaki-murasame · 5 years
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Episode 23 of :re continues to be a really solid adaptation, even if it’s of some very flawed material. And this final arc at least feels a bit less exhausting and overdone than it did in the manga, so that’s neat.
Anyway, detailed thoughts under the cut, and spoilers for the whole manga.
As I expected, this episode covers the first half of volume 16. Like, literally half of it. The volume is roughly 320 pages long, and this episode adapted the first 160 pages, lol. And as I also expected, it worked out just fine, pacing-wise. Barely anything actually got cut. A few scenes got made a bit more concise, and Takizawa didn’t watch Donato and Amon fight, but that’s about it.
At least in terms of the stuff specifically from this part of the manga alone. I think it’s worth noting that they bring Ayato back into the story in this episode, but they don’t really talk much about what he was up to, and it looks like they’re completely cutting out the detail of him bringing back some feral children that lived underground.
I think I like this change a fair bit, even though I can tell it’s gonna annoy a lot of people. I always really disliked how Ishida handled the entire plot point of Ayato finding that underground city and the corpse of the old dragon, so I can certainly live with how the anime is removing a lot of the focus on it. The time spent setting it up in the manga just made it all the more disappointing when absolutely nothing of value came of it, so at least in the anime it’s upfront about how much of a background detail it is.
On the topic of things I didn’t like from around this part of the manga, I’m vaguely disappointed that the anime kept the stuff with Eto being brought back at the last minute, but I can’t really blame them for just being faithful to the manga. I still think that the anime is at it’s best when it’s actively going against the execution of the manga, and this is something where I think they could have easily just cut it out. I have a feeling it’s also going to be something where anime-only people wind up understandably assuming that the manga must SURELY have done more with this plot point, and taken even the SLIGHTEST effort to actually explain why the fuck it’s happening, but yeah no lol. The way that Ishida brought her back out of absolutely nowhere and then almost immediately kills her off was so awfully handled that most of the fandom genuinely hates it and wishes it never happened. There’s a lot of things where I’m in the minority for disliking some parts of the writing, but trust me when I say that nearly everyone hates what Ishida did with Eto here. I honestly still don’t fully grasp what he was even trying to achieve with this, other than him trying to bring the Owl back for the final arc just to . . . make some last-minute parallels to the end of the first series? Who even knows.
That’s actually my only real complaint about this episode, though. Everything else was very solid and well-executed. They didn’t really add anything or flesh anything out beyond what happened in the manga, but they just adapted what happened in the manga in a really solid, satisfying enough way.
I remember disliking how the Donato-Amon and Yomo-Uta fights were handled in the manga, but I think that was mostly a pacing issue. The manga devoted several chapters exclusively to those fight scenes, which just felt unnecessarily drawn-out. It feels a fair bit more natural in the anime, partly because both of those fights are a bit more concise than they were originally, and partly because I think the anime cuts between them a bit more than the manga did, which makes it feel less like you’re following one fight for a weirdly long time. I’d have to reread this part of the manga to remind myself exactly how I feel about it, but I also think that the resolution between Yomo and Uta felt more satisfying and less underwhelming than it did originally.
Also, I can’t really remember if an anime-only person would know about Amon’s history with Donato by this point. I never got around to watching Root A, so I genuinely have no idea if that season talked about their backstory. I know that it hasn’t come up in the :re anime, but even in the :re manga there’s barely any references to Amon’s childhood. So maybe that whole scene was something that wouldn’t work at all for anime-only people, but I can’t tell.
I still have a lot of complicated feelings about Amon’s entire place in :re’s story. It ultimately just feels really unnecessary, like he was mostly brought back just so he could wind up dating Akira and have a happy ending. There’s not really much that the story actually does in :re to substantially develop him or explore his character. On it’s own his whole confrontation with Donato is very nice and bittersweet, and it’s good to see him acknowledging that he’s a part of the warped world he lives in, and that he can’t avoid taking responsibility for that, but overall it feels particularly odd to have his big final moment as a character be focused on his relationship with Donato, given how little screen-time that plot point gets, especially in :re. It feels more logical for the story to focus on how conflict with Kaneki, but that whole thing just gets kinda . . . brushed under the rug in a really unsatisfying way.
I’ll at least say that the disappointing aspects of how Amon is handled as a character are much less obnoxious and jarring as they were in the manga, if only just because the anime has been covering like two thirds of :re in twelve episodes. It’s more reasonable for Amon to not have THAT much focus or development in a 24-episode anime than it was for his moments to be so few and far between across 180 chapters of a manga that ran for like three years. It’s still not the most satisfying thing ever, but at least people watching the anime didn’t have to spend literal YEARS watching basically nothing happen with his character, lol.
Oh right, I just remembered that V exists, and that I guess they’re another part of the episode I disliked. I mean, they’re involved with the whole Eto thing, but my reasons for disliking them are entirely separate. They’re another whole plot point that I think Ishida handled terribly, and there’s not much the anime can do to improve that. They’ve always just been this really lame, cliche shadow organization with murky goals, and nothing much ever gets done with them. I can’t blame any anime-only people for thinking that they’re really boring and under-utilized and unexplored, but the manga doesn’t do much more with them. To be blunt, the fact that I completely forgot about them right after the episode ended kinda says everything you need to know about how badly they’re handled even though they’re kind of sort of the Big Bads [tm] of the entire series, lmao.
I said before that this episode didn’t necessarily add anything new to what was originally in the manga, but after going back through my copy of volume 16 [I donated my English TG manga collection to my local library last week but I still own the last three volumes of :re in Japanese], it looks like that short scene with Mutsuki getting protected by Urie and Akira was anime-original. Which is a bit surprising since it was a fairly minor scene that didn’t impact much. I really liked it though. It’s just a neat detail to show Mutsuki’s friends and colleagues protecting him, and there’s something really bittersweet about how it comes across like he was willing to accept his fate and let himself be killed by the fake Owl, and was surprised to find himself being protected. It helps really hammer in the character growth and reconciliation that’s been going on with him and those around him lately, and it just works really nicely. It continues to be really interesting to me that almost all of the most major changes/cuts/additions in the anime thus far relate to Mutsuki’s character, and in general improving upon how Ishida handled him originally. I really appreciate it, but I’ve already talked about that a lot so I don’t need to go back over it.
Getting to the final part of the episode, the whole scene with Kaneki confronting Furuta wasn’t substantially different to the manga in how it plays out, and what sort of a note the episode ends on, but it’s interesting that the anime is portraying him in a more serious and genuinely threatening light, whereas this bit from the manga really played up his joke-y attitude. I think I prefer it this way, but it’s not the biggest change ever. In general I really like the note this episode ended on. I think the fact that they cut out one or two instances of Kaneki cracking his fingers previously in :re helped make this moment feel more important and surprising, so that’s cool.
Now that we’re halfway into the final volume of the manga, that just leaves the final half of it to adapt in the final episode, which should be totally fine. There’s a lot of scenes that can go by REALLY fast in the anime. Especially the epilogue, since a huge chunk of that can probably just be handled as a montage while the ending theme or whatever plays, rather than how we had to slog through so many pages of so many pointless narrative exposition boxes in the manga. Some of the final scenes between Kaneki, Furuta, and then Rize also felt almost comically drawn out in the manga, which always felt a bit weird given how rushed the overall ending felt, and how tight of a schedule Ishida was working on. You could really tell that he tried and failed to get the ending extended by an additional three chapters.
We don’t know what the final episode will be called yet, but they’ll probably have that sorta info up in the next day or two. I’m kinda excited to see what they call it, since the final episode of :re s1 ditched the naming scheme of the rest of the episode names to give it something more unique. So it’ll be neat to see what they do for the final episode.
I’m of course gonna hold back on giving my final thoughts on the :re anime until it all ends in the next episode, but I think we’re close enough to the end that my feelings on it won’t really change much, so I just wanna reiterate that I genuinely really love it, in spite of it’s flaws. I would have preferred something more . . . ‘transformative’, if that makes sense, but as an adaptation that takes the existing story and just tells it in a better way, I think the anime works surprisingly well. This final season in particular has been a big step up from the manga.
All in all I just have a lot of affection for it and what it’s been trying to achieve [especially with how they’ve done so much to improve the endless list of issues with how badly Ishida handled Mutsuki as a character], and I don’t think that goodwill could be tarnished at this point with just one episode left. I’ve jokingly said before that even though there’s more objectively good options, this is probably one of my favourite anime of this year, but I think I genuinely stand by that. There’s been some REALLY great stuff this year, even in terms of just stuff I’ve fully watched [like Devilman Crybaby, Revue Starlight, Planet With, etc etc], but I just feel really strongly about the :re anime. Also there’s some recency bias going on, lol. It’s been so long since I watched Devilman Crybaby. This year was a goddamn decade long.
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writing-crocodiles · 7 years
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Fandom: Once Upon A Time
Pairing: Rumbelle
Rating: T
Summary: After stabbing Zoso, Rumplestiltskin encounters a young girl that claims to be the entity of the Darkness. She says she hasn’t truly accepted him as the Dark One yet and that he will need to prove himself. During his journey to do so, he meets a young woman named Belle French. Can he convince her he’s an upstanding gentleman, all the while darkening his heart so he may save his son?
Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5
Chapter 5- Opposites Attract- Support and Refutation
The next day Rumple awoke to find that, much to his dismay, he had no clean shirts left. He gathered his clothes, ignored the breakfast Keriam had made and set out for him, and trudged downstairs in his pajamas.
Hopefully it was early enough in the morning that Belle wouldn’t be busy with laundry. All he wanted to do was avoid the whole mess. How she didn’t tell him about Gaston, why she was with Gaston in the first place, how much does Gaston bench press and why he is so much better. What? What could possibly be his appeal?
He made it to the laundry room, pushing the door open with more force than necessary, and listening to the satisfying bang as it hit the inner wall. Belle was there, also wearing her pajamas, reading a book at the base of a running washer. She looked up as he came in and didn’t shrink under his evident scowl.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Morning,” he answered far less cheerfully. He walked past his usual row and went to the furthermost corner of the large room. In said corner was a washer that looked like it hadn’t been used since the Ogres War started. The paint had been scraped off in several places, showing the underlying silver. It looked like it might fall apart, but it was as far away from Belle as he could get at the moment, so he would take it. As he began to toss in his shirts, she bookmarked her most recent read and stood.
He could feel her eyes on him and so he started the washer and sat on the floor, not returning her gaze at all. He was not wearing slippers, so he focused on his feet. How long they were, the veins running through them, pick a feature.
The rattle of the washer masked her footsteps, and he tried very hard to not look up when she rounded the corner and came into view. Yes, he knew he was pouting. Yes, he didn’t think it was very adult of him. Yes, this wasn’t the attitude that the father of a teenager should exhibit. Was he going to stop it, though? No.
“Rumple?” She asked, a hint of worry in her voice.
He wanted to continue his cold shoulder, but answered her anyway, “Yes?”
“Are you alright?”
There were so many ways he could have answered the question, and he ran through them all. Fine. Yes. No. Hold me. I’m just upset. No, I’m okay, just doing laundry. I’m great; you? Okay; how was your night?
What he said was, “Boyfriend?”
He sounded disgusted, which had not been his intent.
It suddenly dawned on her why he was upset, but instead of getting mad, she gave him a small smile. He was kind of cute when he was jealous.
“It’s technically arranged.”
His head snapped around to look at her and her shy smile became more prominent, “Arranged?” He said, testing the ice.
“Oh, definitely,” Belle reassured, “I could never go with someone as superficial as he.”
“Ah,” Rumple whispered, keeping eye contact with her, “I’m sorry I’ve acted so rude this morning.”
“You were jealous,” she said simply, “it’s fine.”
Rumple stood up and tried to defend himself, “I was not!”
She giggled and he felt the corner of his nose twitch. That problem was put to rest, but one thing still bothered him.
“Why were you letting him push you around?”
The mood turned somber and Belle became very interested in her dark blue nail polish, “My father is in trouble. He made a deal with the wrong man in the mafia. Gaston…” She looked back to him, “is that man’s right hand, and with his word on my side, my father is pardoned. As long as I’m with Gaston, Papa’s okay….”
Rumple pulled a face, “As long as you let him oppress you, you mean.”
“I’m not oppressed!”
She had raised her voice at him, so he matched her volume as he said, “You didn’t say one word to me yesterday!”
“If I had, he might have hurt you.”
“Then that’s my problem to deal with, Belle!”
“No, it’s-” she stopped, giving Rumple the time he needed to realize what she already had. They were so close their noses were almost touching and they could hear each other breathe. During their shouting match, they had steadily stepped forward until their present position. Soft brown eyes now searched the piercing blue, waiting for her to finish her sentence.
“No, what?” He asked, not moving away. He felt his index finger involuntarily move, almost like it was trying to tell him to grab her hand.
“I can’t remember,” she answered, still gazing directly into his eyes. She was amazed how, even in this garish lighting, they still glistened. The fluorescent bulbs overhead making them a shade of amber. She suddenly had a strong urge to kiss him. It wouldn’t take much, just for her to raise herself to her toes a bit.
Gaston was up in her apartment, though, and if he thought she was taking abnormally long and came looking for her and found them….
She closed her eyes as her washing machine gave an obnoxious beep, cutting the connection. Rumple’s heart twinged as she walked away to tend to her clothes, but he set to watching her. She removed her laundry and then went to a drying on the wall; sticking them in, setting the timer, and starting it. She went back to her basket and picked it up. A moment of hesitation, then she looked back at him.
“Do you like hamburgers?”
The question caught him off guard, “I- I don’t think I’ve ever had one.”
“Okay, well, they’re great… and Gaston goes on patrol in about an hour on the other side of town,” she said, and he saw where this was going, “The burger place I’m thinking of is outside of the mafia’s influence and they never leave their territory. Would you maybe like to come have lunch with me? They have good iced tea, too.”
Before paying attention to all the warning alarms in his head, he said what he wanted to say, “Yes, I would like that.”
Belle smiled, “Great, I’ll come back down after Gaston’s left and we can go.”
“Yeah,” Rumple said, “Sounds good.” After she had left the laundry room, tossing him a hooded look, he realized she was probably going to go and change out of her pajamas. Meanwhile, he was stuck. He could only hope they would be finished by the time she was ready. He wanted to look nice because no matter how many times he told himself that not did she have a boyfriend, she wasn’t real, he wanted to enjoy this. It gave him extreme satisfaction for him to think about how he had a date. The first one since Milah been taken, actually. Rumple could go with a free conscious, thinking about how someone else had liked him enough to suggest that they go to lunch together.
He found himself smiling. That was a nice thought….
Someone liked him. __________________________________
As this was all transpiring, the breakfast for Rumple that had been set out upstairs was getting cold. The maker of said breakfast and the writer of the aforementioned note was anxiously awaiting the arrival of her Host.
Keriam was on a park bench, sitting in a position that would have looked nonchalant, had it not been for the fact she kept looking over her shoulder.
“Hmm, you’re here,” a man’s voice said, “it seems I was right to create Belle.”
She swiveled on the bench to see a tall, sandy haired, young looking pest standing behind her. Her eyes narrowed, she would have rathered she slog through his mess without actually coming face to face with the Light.
“And, in turn, I was right that you were here, so it follows that I was right to create Gaston and the mob.”
The man sneered, “I thought that was your work; only the Darkness could create such a misogynistic, pompous-”
“Whoa- hey, now!” Keriam protested, jumping over the back of the bench to confront him, “I’m against misogyny as much as the next guy. It was your fault for creating your ‘instrument of light’ in a female’s image.”
“Yes, well, it was your fault for making your ‘instrument of’-” he stopped when he saw her grimace; a smile curled his lips, “Oh, so you’re still having the Host Problem, then.”
The Darkness took a deep breath, blowing it hard out of her nose as she glared at him. She was trying to think of an answer that would not lead to ridicule.
The Light continued, “How interesting that Darkness is supposed to be more powerful,” an evil gleam was in his eyes, “yet I am allowed to wander free, while you must be stuck to the hip of a whiny man-child.” He strode past her and took her spot on the bench, not having to look to know the color was rising in her cheeks. She skirted the bench and sat down facing him. She grew even more angry when he ignored her and stretched his legs out, placing his hands behind his head.
“Rumplestiltskin isn’t a man-child, and he doesn’t whine; except when he talks about needing to get back to his son.”
“He has a family, then?”
She cursed herself for mentioning it, “Son.”
“Just a son?” The Light looked to her and the daggers she was shooting him gave sufficient answer, “Hmmm.. what an excellent addition….”
“Addition?” Keriam said sharply, “Addition to what?”
“To my plan,” he said, “before you darken… Rumplestiltskin, was it? Well, before you get him to be able to accept you as a ruling factor of his life, you’re going to die.”
All the color that had been filling her face now drained.
“Right,” she said, hoping she sounded like she didn’t believe him, “and how are you going to do that?”
“Oh, I’m not going to do it. Rumplestiltskin and Belle are,” he undid his comfortable pose and leaned into her face, “ with True Love’s Kiss.”
She nervously laughed, “What?”
“Rumplestiltskin and Belle are getting cosy, with my supervision, of course, and when they kiss, it will attack you first. You know, since Rumplestiltskin is your Host. With you gone I can make Belle fully real, they can go back to his life, and then his son will have a mother.” The Light looked too pleased with himself, “Brilliant, isn’t it?”
The Darkness wasn’t listening now and rounded the conversation back to herself, “You can’t kill the Darkness. People will still continue to do dark deeds.”
“True,” the Light said, “but I won’t have to deal with you, darling. You’ll be dead."
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eloarei · 7 years
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Damsel and Company in Distress (aka “DamselCo.”)
Chapter “it’s the beginning of the story so I guess we’ll call it One”  (So, everybody’s got that one original fic, right? The one that when someone says, “your original story” that’s the one they think of? This is mine. I originally started writing it when I was sixteen. Which was 12 years ago, god help me. This past November, as part of NaNoWriMo, I started rewriting it. (Let’s be honest: “again”.)  Someone please humor me and read this.)  IT STARTS HERE >.  It was said that the northern kingdoms were, at one point, a singular country, ruled by a single monarch. Now, people both in the north and elsewhere had differing opinions on whether the dissolution was a good or a bad thing, but there was an undeniable fact: turning one kingdom into upwards of a hundred increased the number of princesses almost exponentially. This was good news for the knights of the region, who suddenly had a lot more to do with their lives, because those princesses sure were not going to rescue themselves. There were, honestly, more princesses than anyone knew what to do with. The sudden increase in knightly activity resulted in the creation of an agency to keep track of them and the princesses they rescued, and while it wasn't strictly necessary to go through those official channels, the simple fact of the matter was that nobody would take a knight seriously if he didn't, or if the agency rated him poorly. They also wouldn't take him very seriously if he was not, in fact, a 'him', but this did not become an issue until many decades after the agency's formation, and even then, most everybody ignored the issue anyway. After all, the mere concept of a female knight was silly and of little consequence. XxX It was a dark and stormy mid-afternoon. There really wasn't any reason for it to be, but that was weather for you. It was supposed to have been a decent day, but the immediate area was void of any good weathermancers; 'supposed to have been' was hardly more than a guess from one of the local farmers. Anyway, it wasn't quite raining yet, just windy with a lot of dark clouds blowing about. So, the knight that was struggling up the hill was luckily not having to slog through too much mud, which was good, because the wind was proving enough of a challenge, given how steep the hill was. Before terribly long (and after only a few times being whipped across the face by thorny branches), the knight reached the apex of the hill, upon which stood quite a tall stone tower. (That wasn't a surprise or anything, no. It was, actually, exactly the reason the knight had been climbing the hill in the first place.) Also luckily, the massive wooden door into the tower was not locked or barred, although it was awfully heavy. The bottom level of the tower was entirely empty, as long as you didn't count piles of bones and rotting corpses as anything. The knight did not, since skeletons were fairly irrelevant when considering any of the few reasons one would bother to come to a tower like this, those reasons being treasure and princesses. (If one was a necromancer, now, that would be a different story. However, this knight was not a necromancer, nor was any other knight in the history of the agency (at least so far as the agency knew; the exception would be a story for another time, if, indeed, there was an exception).)   A few boxes and pieces of furniture littered the second floor, but they were all picked clean of any useful, interesting, or otherwise worthy items. And this was alright, anyway, since really the knight was not here to pilfer some noble's second-best miscellany. The third floor was essentially the exact same as the second, in the ways that counted. On the fourth floor, there was a dragon.
Now, the knight was rather good at swordfighting, but dragons are terrifying. Certainly some people liked them, but those people were at least a little crazy. Fighting a dragon was also a little crazy, so the knight did sort of a bare-bones version of a duel, which mostly involved barely dodging a blast of fire-breath and a couple of swipes of the dragon's inordinately sharp claws, and slashing at the dragon's tail just enough to make it screech in pain and leave off the chase, allowing the knight to climb to the final floor (attic notwithstanding). The fifth and final floor held the prize. At least, it was supposed to, based on everything the knight knew about princess towers. As was implied by the name, they typically held princesses. This one, being home to a dragon as well, was sure to hold quite the princess. The princess was not waiting at the top of the stairs for her valiant rescuer, so her valiant rescuer had to do a little searching before getting properly to the rescue part. The ornate bed was around the corner, which seemed a likely place for the princess to be hiding. Or, well, not hiding. Taking a nap, maybe; it was a dark and stormy mid-afternoon, after all. So the knight approached the pretty drapery-hung four-poster, took hold of the edge of the curtain, and tore it (gently) open. What was presented was pretty clearly not what either party had anticipated. “Are you kidding me?” the knight whined, glaring down at what ought to have been a princess, but which definitely had an Adam's apple. Aside from that, the person also had a slightly squarer jaw than was usual for a princess, somewhat less manicured eyebrows, and a little bit more sideburn. It was only a hint, but a hint of sideburn was still too much for a princess, as they were typically girls. The knight wasn't the only one in the room who had an issue with what they saw. “I can't believe this,” said the person formerly assumed to be a princess. He rose up on his elbows, out of the traditional sleeping-princess pose, and glared right back at the knight, who was clearly (by his estimation) an impostor. After all, knights were tall and had swords and wore armor and were male. The person standing before him was not male; ergo, this person was not a knight. “What the hell is a boy doing in a princess tower?!” the knight asked, seemingly rhetorically before asking again in a more direct and less rhetorical fashion. “What are you doing in a princess tower?!” The boy (call him a prince) scoffed. “What am I doing? What are you doing? I was waiting for a knight to rescue me, a real knight! Do you know how long I've been waiting?! It's been... I don't even know how long, it's been so long!” He sat up more fully, pulling himself into a cross-legged position on the mattress. Then he sighed. The knight huffed in frustration and crossed her arms. “I am a real knight! You're the liar in this situation. And of the two of us, I think I'm the more inconvenienced right now. Nobody is ever going to take me seriously if I come back with a boy and try to claim he's a princess.” “I never said I was a princess,” the prince said. “No, but it's kind of implied. Towers like this only hold three things: treasure, princesses, and the dragons that guard them, and there wasn't a hint of treasure in the whole rest of the tower.” “Yeah, well, how do you--” the prince began, before trailing off with a concerned look on his face. He narrowed his eyes at the knight, looking very young and confused and, admittedly, not all that un-princesslike. “The dragon, she was here earlier. How did you get past her?” “I fought it, of course,” the knight said, standing taller and putting her hands on her hips. “What sort of coward do you take me for?” The prince didn't bother to give an answer. Instead, he hopped up out of the bed and ran to the stairwell, his bare feet slapping the hard stone floor, the long end of his tabard robe trailing behind him. The knight followed after him, rounding the corner of the stairwell just in time to see him run up to the dragon, which was huddled up in a pitiful little (well, relatively speaking) lump on the opposite side of the room, licking its tail wound. “Oh, Teresa,” the prince cooed. “You poor thing, are you alright? God, you're bleeding. Here, here, let me--” He crouched down over the dragon's tail and hovered his hands above the gash. “How did it go?” he asked himself, before hurriedly murmuring an incantation of some sort. A white light flared in the wound for a moment, and then he stopped, apparently satisfied. “I think you'll be fine now. But don't let yourself get hurt anymore by these terrible knights. Just eat them next time, okay?” “Sorry I didn't give it a chance,” the knight called sarcastically. The prince stood and came over to where the knight still stood in the doorway. “'She',” he said. “My dragon is a girl. You're not very good with genders, are you?” “You're one to talk,” the knight said, stepping back into the safety of the narrow stairwell, in case the dragon decided it wanted to come after her again. Or, fine, unless the dragon decided she wanted to come after her again. She was just slightly too big. “I told you, I never claimed to be a princess or a girl,” the prince said, glaring up at the knight, and now she could see that he was fairly short for a guy. Actually, she realized, he was probably pretty young. “How old are you, anyway?” she asked. “Seventeen,” he said, looking a little defiant. “Why? Is that gonna affect whether or not you decide to rescue me?” The knight shook her head, messy reddish hair flying around her face. “No,” she said. “I'll rescue you anyway. I mean, it's not gonna count, but I'll still do it. Unless you wanna stay here?” The prince scowled. “Not really,” he said, a cross between adamant and resigned. “I don't think my family will be too pleased I was rescued by some girl, but it's better than hanging around here any longer.” Nodding, the knight said, “Fine then. Get your stuff and let's go.” She followed the prince back upstairs, but not before casting a nervous glance back over her shoulder at the dragon. (It was now sleeping quite peacefully. She. She was now sleeping quite peacefully.) The prince looked around for a minute, seeming a bit lost, and then dashed to what must have been a closet. He emerged a minute later wearing some small flat shoes and a sleeveless overcoat on top of his tabard robe. “Um, alright,” he said. “You're not taking anything else with you?” the knight asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow at him. “Um, no? Unless you want something from here? I mean, it's all pretty good stuff, I guess.” “Thanks, but I'll pass.” Although the blankets and tapestries and books all looked like they might be worth something, or even just nice to have as a sort of trophy, she hadn't come prepared to take treasures with her, and the idea of carrying a bundled-up rug under her arm all the way home just wasn't appealing. They stopped to check on the dragon again on their way out (well, the prince did; the knight stayed out of striking distance, in case it snapped out of the apparent trance the prince's presence put it in. ...Put her in). “Are you gonna be okay by yourself for a while, Teresa?” he asked. The dragon nudged her snout up into his outstretched hand in a way that was really cute and almost made the knight a little sick and also made her miss her own dog, who was probably at home, chasing mom's turkeys in her absence. Satisfied that the dragon was able to fend for itself, the prince led the way down to the first floor and out into the day... where the stormy winds had subsided and left the sky a pale wisp-strewn late-afternoon blue. He took a deep breath and turned to face the knight, his arms swinging slightly at his sides and a cheerful smile on his face. Apparently all he'd needed was a little fresh air to set his mood to rights. “So, where are we headed?” he asked. “I've never been rescued before, so pretty much all I know is about riding off into the sunset. I've got no clue what comes after that.” The knight smirked. “Well, first of all, we're going south-east, not west, so we'll have the sun at our backs, mostly. Second of all, I, um, didn't bring a horse, so we won't be doing any riding at all. I hope you like hiking!” “Oh,” the prince said, deflating a little. “Okay then. Lead the way, I guess, Miss...?” “Addisson,” the knight said. “Addisson Marianne Lillith MacMurray. And seriously, don't call me 'miss'.” “God, that's a long name,” the prince said, looking a little horrified. “Is it?” Addisson asked. “What's yours then?” “Ellery,” the prince replied shortly. “Ellery...?” Addisson waited, assuming there would be a few more names to follow the first. “...Mmm... yeah,” Ellery said. “It's Ellery.” He nodded. Addisson laughed, a little disbelieving. “Just Ellery, huh? What kingdom are you from where they don't give people middle and last names?” “The South,” Ellery said with a shrug. “Ahh,” Addisson said, as if that explained it, when, in reality, she knew next to nothing about the South except that it was big and sandy and they made nice fabric. Oh, and that it was south of here. “Well then, uh, Prince Ellery. Let's get going. It's a bit of a walk to the next town and I-- wait, you are a prince, right? I just sort of assumed.” “I'm a prince,” Ellery confirmed, following as Addisson led the way down the hill at just barely too brisk of a pace to keep up with easily. (She was wearing boots, after all, and had experience with climbing and un-climbing hills. He, on the other hand, was wearing flats and had perhaps never climbed anything more treacherous than the occasional sand dune. Sand dunes could be dangerous, yes, but they didn't have big rocks and roots to trip over, and if you fell then you'd usually slide down, instead of tumbling down to break your crown on a tree stump.) “So, in the South, do they usually put princes in towers?” Addisson asked from some yards ahead of him. “Because up here, it's typically just princesses.” “Oh, um, no,” Ellery said. He was a little distracted, trying not to break his neck, but he tried to give as coherent an answer as he could. “I'm probably the first. You see, I have an older sister, but by the time she was old enough to go in a tower, she was already a clear favorite to be the next leader, so everyone thought it would be a waste. Besides, she had a fiance already. Actually, they'll probably be getting married any day now.” Addisson waited at the foot of the hill for Ellery to catch up, and then set off again at her practiced pace. “Okay, but why put you in the tower?” she called over her shoulder. “Why not just... sell it or something?” “It's customary for a monarchy to put one of their heirs up for rescue, isn't it? I think it's-- ahh, damn.” He stopped for a minute as his shoe came loose. Addisson waited for him some feet away, though she looked a little impatient. As soon as he got the flat jammed back on his foot, he hopped along after her and picked up his explanation. “I think it's written down in one of our treatise or something, that all participating countries had to do it. It's supposed to foster cooperation and partnership between families, or something like that.” “Really,” Addisson said, as if she wasn't actually all that interested or sure Ellery knew what he was talking about. “I'm pretty sure there are ruling families around here who don't bother, so you guys probably could have gotten away without doing it.” “Oh,” Ellery said, which effectively ended their conversation for the next hour or so. It was getting to be dark by the time Addisson decided Ellery couldn't go much farther, so they decided to settle for the night. “What? No, I can keep going,” Ellery insisted, at which Addisson scoffed. “Can you, now? Because it's been daylight out so far, and you've already lost your shoes more times than I've bothered to count. If you did that in the dark, we'd never find them.” She pointed at the knees of his calf-length pants, which had been torn up from the number of times he'd stumbled. “And you're beginning to look like a beggar. I think we ought to stop for the night.” Reluctantly, Ellery agreed. (Not that he had much of a choice in the matter. She was his guide, and he'd probably get himself eaten by wolves if he tried to wander off without her. ...Which necessarily made him feel very trusting of her, all of a sudden.) So they found a dry dirt clearing between a cluster of trees, and Addisson set about making a campfire, while Ellery mostly watched. She dug around in her pack and produced a little bag of food-strips of some sort, along with a thin, rolled-up blanket, which she handed to Ellery. “Sorry, all I've got for dinner is this turkey jerky,” she said, handing him a few pieces as they sat down around the fire. “It's pretty fresh though. My mom made it right before I left home, which was... I guess about a week or two ago.” “A week or two is fresh?” Ellery asked, looking dubiously at the dried bark-like food he was holding. “Well yeah,” Addisson said. “For jerky. This stuff can last for months.” Ellery considered the stuff, then took a bite out of it-- or tried to. It was really quite tough, though it had a savory flavor, once he got to chewing it. “Huh. It's not so bad,” he mentioned. It wasn't a familiar flavor, though, and it left him wondering what kind of strange Northern plant this 'turkey' could possibly be. He guessed it might be a type of mushroom, but he didn't bother to ask. After eating, Ellery laid down by the fire, trying to get a good amount of blanket both beneath him and covering him. It wasn't easy, and he didn't sleep especially well. He did fall asleep eventually, though, as he was shaken awake by Addisson once the sun had begun to peek through the trees. He shivered and tried to pull the blanket closer around him. “Cold...” he complained, watching his breath turn a little white in the chilly morning air. “What, like it was much warmer in your tower?” Addisson asked, looking down at him with her arms crossed. “I don't recall any central heating pipes.” “Dragon's breath kept it warm,” Ellery explained shortly, huddling further under the thin blanket, trying to adjust to the cool air before subjecting himself to it fully. Addisson responded with a 'meh' and left him for a few minutes while she cleaned up the campsite. “Alright, prince,” she said, nudging him with the toe of her boot after she felt he'd had long enough. “Let's get going. The town's just a few hours from here, and if we get there before midday we might be able to get some warm food before handling our business. What say you?” Ellery peeked out from under the blanket, looking vaguely miserable but also a little excited by the prospect of warm anything. “I say 'will you let me carry the blanket'?” With a short huff of amusement and a wry smile, Addisson nodded. “It's all yours,” she said, before she reached down and hauled him up by the forearm. “Now, onward. I'm tired of sleeping in trees.” “You slept in a tree?” Ellery asked, cocking his head to the side in a birdlike way as he trotted up beside her. They spent the next few hours discussing basic survival strategies, and by the time they arrived at the town, Ellery felt like he'd learned more in the past day than in the past year about living in the North. It was a strange and cold place, but the more he saw and heard of it, the more it grew on him. Now the town they came upon was hardly more than a dirty trading post, situated at a crossroads of two popular routes. Seven or eight wooden buildings lined the churned-mud path that served as the town center, and a handful more were stacked behind them. “Well, this place is... rustic,” Ellery commented, following Addisson to the largest of the buildings. “It's damn near heaven, is what it is,” she responded, laughing. “You haven't been traveling long enough until a place like this nearly sets your heart on fire.” Ellery choked on a laugh. “You take this knight thing pretty seriously, don't you.” She didn't respond, but Ellery got the feeling she wasn't offended. She held the door for him when they entered her chosen building. TBC whenever I get around to it. (Although I could dredge up the old version for you, if you wanted; that’s like 20k and is only, oh, 8 years old.) 
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fic-dreamin · 7 years
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Brilliant and beautiful -- the perfect ending to a gripping trilogy Justin Cronin’s THE CITY OF MIRRORS sets out to do the seemingly impossible – wrap up scores of characters and an immense landscape of action in a way that will satisfy readers who have waited four years for the publication of this book. Well, I guess Cronin can do the impossible! Because CITY is a brilliant novel, powerful in its message and extraordinarily satisfying in its concluding pages. Spanning almost a thousand years, the story manages to keep the reader intimately connected to a group of characters we’ve known since the first installment (THE PASSAGE) while also letting us glimpse the vast scope of a story that touches the entire human race. This is a novel about hope, love, and human endurance set against a truly terrifying landscape that threatens the survival of humanity itself. Some have called this a classic “good vs. evil” story, but I don’t agree. It’s really a story about our own inner conflicts, the very human battles between our better natures and the urges that seek to undo us. What saves us, says Cronin, is love. If only we can recognize it. Go to Amazon
Disappointing. It seems like the author had a three-book deal but only two books' worth of story. None of the previous characters were further developed, and the new characters were just outlines. Stories, like the 20-year rebuilding of the ship, which would have been great books in themselves, were just sketched in. And the less said about the main character, who tells his backstory for much of the book, the better. His reasons for ruining the world make no sense at all and we have to listen to him basically whine for ... like ... ever. And why was Amy even in this book? She was locked up for most of it. The new characters and storyline introduced at the end of the book were unnecessary, except to tee up a Book 4? Yikes let's hope not. Cronin is a great writer--please move on to a new story! Go to Amazon
Unsatisfying So much time has passed since book 2 of the Trilogy, that there are mixed feelings- excitement remembering how caught up and invested you were in these very interesting and complex characters- and confusion remembering plot points. This book is somewhat of a mess. Greatly detailed in some chapters, and oftimes annoyingly so, and yet we struggle with time. And distance. And dream vs reality. I would have used better differentiated chapters going back and forth between time and characters and places. Time is badly handled; perhaps Miles's story could have been interjected throughout and the garden and voices would've worked better. Cronin doesn't know horses like he knows ammunition, or the impossibility of time and space even given this is a work of fantasy. Go to Amazon
Good Conclusion With One Glaring Exception A satisfying conclusion to “The Passage” trilogy. Full of action, suspense, danger, heroism, love, loss, adventure, and soul. I was very pleased that Cronin revisited one of my favorite characters, the long-suffering Anthony Carter. (Too bad my favorite character, Wolgast, is no more) However, I found part II “The Lover” to be a real slog, and almost put the book down. The only interesting aspect of the life story of Tim Fanning, aka “Patient Zero”, was the window into the lives of the rich and shameless Ivy League students. Go to Amazon
Great Expectations Oh the disappointment. I have waited for this book for so long only to be let down. If you're looking for the interpersonal relationships that made the first two books in this series so addictive you won't find them here. Our 12 heroes from the previous novels have scattered far and wide and don't really seem to care much about each other's lives. If you're looking for page upon page of Tim Fanning (Zero) telling his side of the story then this is it. Living underground in the subways of NYC for a hundred or so years drinking rats' blood really does tend to mess with your head but it seems all he needs now is the bow of a ship from which to scream 'I'm king of the world!'. Yes he hates Jonas Lear, the man who kept Fanning's infected self as a type of science experiment, but there was more. We learn just why Fanning suddenly showed up for Lear's expedition and why Zero's 'many' lived a dark dream. Go to Amazon
... subplots with different inter related groups of characters and unnecessary exposition and arm chair psychological analysis o The book drags due to excessive subplots with different inter related groups of characters and unnecessary exposition and arm chair psychological analysis of the villain. It staggers back and forth between these groups eventually winding up at a tacked on meaningless ending. It was much ado about nothing and very disappointing after the first two books. Go to Amazon
Five Stars Two Stars A great read Amazing dystopian vampire story - multi generational storytelling!! I couldn't wait to read this every night Sad to leave this behind... 5 stars Riveting All I can say is stupendous Five Stars A great writer can tell a wonderful story without a lot ...
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naiasonod · 7 years
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*** Drabbles written as part of a guild application.  Seems a shame not to keep them here for posterity as well!
*** Your character stumbles into a seedy bar of which is full of conversing patrons of many races and genders, clanking drinks, bumbling waitresses, and creaking of floorboards. A handsome gentleman/lady stands near the entrance, watching with hooded eyes. Role play your character's entrance.[/i]
It had been some while since he'd set foot in a tavern so full of character as the one he now stood before. Intermittent laughter and admixtured aromas of body odor, cheap beer and mud took on very nearly a life of their own as he drew near, and though most right-thinking beings of culture and civilization would wrinkle their noses or even turn away altogether, it brought a quirky, amused little smirk of amusement to his lips.
"Hello there!" A loud, brash greeting was just the thing to startle the lovely young Breton lurking near the doorway. She'd been watching him approach, but never the less bristled in fleeting alarm under the immediacy of both his attention and his blunt salutation. "I say, you wouldn't know if there's anything inexpensive to eat in here, would you? I'm famished, and would hate to slog through a crowd only to find that the beds were full and the bowls were empty for the night."
Commandeering the direction of the exchange straight-away, Nai knew that the young lady was offput by the mild sourness that ghosted her expression. It didn't trouble him in the slightest; he stared unctuously at her over the trio of moments it took her to sort out an answer and turn a momentary glance at the pub's closed door.
"I wouldn't know." Her sullen reply was delivered by a tentative tone. "I'm waiting for someone, not playing hostess for this..." a judgmental pause, "...establishment. Or its would-be patrons."
A quick, reassuring smile was Nai's first response, shifting his weight to one leg and leaning restively upon his staff; a mage's staff by even a moment's worth of inspection from the unenlightened, and battered with use, age or both. "I see, I see. Well, you're clearly not waiting for me." A silver brow quickly ratcheted up two clicks. "Or are you?! You aren't with the Mage's Guild, are you? Stars aligned, have I finally been accepted?!"
This line of over-the-top presumption and inquiry was brought to bear due to the simple fact that the woman bore a small tattoo on her right hand's ring finger, bearing the seal of the guild in question. While he'd drawn no attention to having noticed this small detail displayed by her ungloved hands, he did note that she swiftly pocketed her hands just as soon as the term 'Mage's Guild' was uttered.
"No." her answer was short and sharply tempered. "I have no clue who you are and am certain I do not wish to if you're one that would throw your lot in with that guild of liars and backstabbers. If you're not yet a member...take a stranger's advice and walk away before they ruin you, as they have so many others."
Now this, Nai mused to himself, was an interesting turn of the exchange. What sordid past did this young, lovely lady have with the Mage's Guild, to motivate her to speak so freely of her dispassion for it? The marking on her finger and her candor alike bespoke to bad experiences, but one never knew, and guessing overmuch at the stories of others was poor form. It led only to needless mistakes and pretention, neither of which at all suited him.
Feigning a shocked expression, he went somewhat wide eyed. "G..goodness! Well then. I mean, but...why? What?" A false but well executed stammer, paired with the devolution of his expression from shock to confusion, had the desired effect - the young woman's face and tone took on mirroring elements of exasperation.
Exasperation that was preface to elaboration, which was exactly what he'd hoped to invite.
"Look, high elf...you'd do better to seek a private apprenticeship, assuming you have even the talent common to your people. Joining the Mage's Guild because you wish to learn is a fool's errand. You'll learn alright, but little enough of magic unless you teach yourself in between pointless, demeaning assignments playing servant and fetch-it for higher ranking guild members. Stick it out in the hopes of finally being taught much of anything true or real about magic and you'll learn...as I did...that the high ranking members are far more interested in protecting their own titles, prestige and influence than in helping rivals achieve more of their own for themselves."
Throughout this short exposition, Nai stared up at the somewhat taller woman. All the while, his expression transitioned from confused to bemused, and slightly alarmed.
"Oh dear." He fretted in following, tugging at a stray lock of his metallicly silver hair in full seeming of cogitative distress. "That's...that doesn't sound at all like something I'd--" He paused for a half moment; a half moment the hooded young lady seized as opportunity to say "Then don't." with a finality that cut the rest of his sentence off altogether. Her sullen gaze turned to his staff, narrowed slightly as her pupils flared and glimmered with magic's light - a small Detection dweomer, he well recognized, and neatly done for the lack of reliance upon gestures or incantation - whereupon which she looked at once back to his face, to meet his gaze.
"That's a rather powerful staff you have. If your skill is worthy of a weapon like that...the Mage's Guild doesn't deserve you."
Two quickshot glances to his staff, as abruptly a referenced topic as it was thence departed from, gave him a fractional moment to consider the direction this exchange was taking. It was starting to sound like more than well-meaning advice. Was it, though? Only one way to find out.
An awkward shift of his weight was affected. He held his staff a bit closer, as though by reflex for it merely being mentioned. "Family heirloom." He offered by way of succinct explanation. "I do, I'm told, have exceptional talent for magic. I can certainly use this staff well enough, anyway. I'd applied to join the Mage's Guild in the hopes of...mm...learning more. Meeting other mages. Preferably those that do not share my kinfolks' zeal for ...well. Lineage and being control freaks."
It was the young woman's turn to loft a brow for inquiry's sake. Quite likely, she'd never heard an Altmer speak thus about their own people, though her remarks in return were specific to the matter of magic; specifically, his. She weighed and considered a heavy thought for a few lips-pursed moments before she spoke.
"The one I am waiting for is...my master and mentor. I do not know if she will have any interest in you, or indeed if I am a fool moved too easily by pity for a stranger, but...if you wish to wait and meet her, she should be along any minute now. You do not need the Mage's Guild, even if she will not take on another student, however. Unless you aspire to be a lickspittle and pawn perpetually kept down to serve another's ambitions anyway. If you wish to be someone else's yes-man or political pawn, or both, the Mage's Guild can certainly help you with that. Stick around and meet her or don't as you like."
It was all Nai could do, to feign a look of unease. Putting on a small show of being torn and indecisive required effort.
The reason why was simple: this was interesting. How random! How unexpected!
How intriguing that the Mage's Guild, at least wherever this young woman had been, was so good at alienating junior members. Tamping down his enthusiasm, he made a half-hearted show of looking at the pub door, then back at the young woman, as though the door and her figure presented two paths in the road before him.
"...I've...I've heard things. About the Guild." He put on his best confessional tone. "I don't know if anything you've said is...exactly so or not, but I've been waiting nigh-on a month to hear if I'm to be accepted. I ...don't think they're going to bother letting me know either way, are they."
The young woman snorted one indignant, mildly inelegant time. "You're Altmer. You'll wait until dogs grow wings for the head of the Guild chapter here to do anything but throw your application straight into his fireplace."
Whether it was pure hyperbole or not, the clue of the rumor's existence alone gave Nai the further glimmer of an impression that something was definitely amiss with the Mage's Guild out this way. Finding out more would be worthwhile. And behold, opportunity was at hand, and in the form of a fetching young Breton gal no less.
Stepping out of the main path and more alongside his interlocutor, Nai settled in alongside her with a palpable finality of his own. He had decided.
"Then what have I to lose by meeting this master of yours? Even if she has no interest in teaching me the time of day, I've at least met you. That's a better turn of luck than I've had in recent memory."
His smirk was entirely internal in taking note of the ever-so-brief pause that his warm statement brought to her. She didn't know what to make of those words, and clearly hadn't entirely expected her empassioned exposition to have any effect, let alone to achieve their direction's aim. So it was that she elected to say nothing at all right then rather than sound a fool.
This suited Nai just fine.
****Walking home, your character runs into a group of bandits while your character is alone. The alleyway is secluded and mostly quiet, with guards only a block or two away roaming the streets. Two of the bandits smirk as the third... attacks you by leaping into the air in an attempt to trample you to the ground with their feet, holding a dagger in each hand! Role play your character's response to the attack.****
"You really shouldn't do this."
His affable warning was, naturally, completely ignored. It always was, and considering that he was all of 5'1" and roughly as imposing to behold as might be a well-dressed adolescent, it was no great wonder that his warnings never, ever worked.
It wasn't that he expected them to, at least. It was simply a matter of being polite, and also one of being thorough. No one would ever be able to say that he'd not warned these foolish thugs. It served no purpose other than to groom his own sense of propriety.
Nobody was particularly nearby. No witnesses, just as the thugs had surely intended with this little ambush. Kudos to them for successfully ambushing him, he supposed, but that was not the biggest challenge one might hope to find in all of Nirn.
Now that they had him, what ever did they imagine they were going to do with him? It was probably going to be boring.
And there it was; the glint, the jolt forward and the leap. In that moment, he was bored already. With a spit tone of incantation, the space between himself and his erstwhile assailants erupted into a snarling lightshow of flaying, whipping lightning.
Both the the man leaping at him, as well as all of his advancing cohorts to his rear, were blasted in an instant following by burning, incinerating jags of blindingly bright skyfire. They had no chance. They'd doubtlessly thought they'd eyed up some weak little mage that would prove easy to roll in an alleyway with minimal effort.
What they got, as reward for their terminal error in judgment, was the momentary annoyance made manifest of one of the more powerful archmagi on Nirn. Their deaths were almost immediate; a mercy, considering broad truisms about arousing the wrath of wizards and how the nastier among them could make you suffer for a thousand years and have you begging for death in the first five seconds.
The alleyway was quite secluded and mostly quiet. There were no witnesses, just as the ill-fated bandits determined was in their favor. The nearest guards heard the pops and cracks of lightning, and quickly deduced that it had to be magical given that it was a clear night without thunderhead in the sky.
Despite all their haste in seeking out the source of the racket, all they found in the still electrostatically crackling alley were three burnt corpses, one of them with two daggers heat-warped and glowing dull red in his skeletally charred hands. The reek of burnt flesh and cooked innards mixed with overpowering ozone left them grimacing and seeking fresh air a few paces away.
"Looks like these blokes got the bad side of a mage." One muttered, stating the obvious with unironic aplomb.
The other shook his head, in lieu of saying something snide. "Yeah." he grunted. "Best call the corpse wagon, get these sods sorted quick. I've heard bad things about corpses rising up when a mage does you in."
"Hogwash." The other peered back down into the crackling alley, but elected once again to wait for the stench to dissipate a bit more before trying his luck heading in again. "That only happens if they bite you."
He was immediately cuffed. "That's werewolves, you ignorant git. Mages don't turn folks into zombies by biting them." Swatting back, the other defensively muttered "As far as you know. You're no mage either. Who says I didn't read it somewhere?"
"Like you can read." The other gloweringly muttered. "No matter. Lets get on with this. I'll spare your pretty little nose and go sort the bodies. You fetch the wagon."
His partner, relieved by being tapped to do the job not requiring him to smell the burnt bodies up close and personal any further, was quick to ask "Shall I fetch some reinforcements? We could patrol the area some."
"Nah." The other guard rumbled after a moment's thought. "Look at the facts. Dark alley, dead of night. These blokes tried to ambush the wrong blood, is what I say happened. See how they's all got weapons drawn, and they was all facing someone? They wasn't ambushed. They were doing the ambushing."
The other guard didn't really take that much interest in the crime scene, but still felt it worthwhile to say "Oh, you're a real detective now then, aintcha?"
His partner grunted. "Gonna be. Ain't gonna be patrolling streets in the ass hour of the night all my life until some drunk with a busted bottle or a knife shanks me to death from behind, unlike you. I got dreams. Plus, I've arrested thugs out of these alleys before. Probably arrested one or more of those deaders before. Guess I won't be again, 'ey?"
The other snorted. "Whatever. Sod your dreams. I'll go get the wagon."
His partner, left alone with the crime scene, shivered slightly once he was alone and could condone the affectation without being seen as weak by his fellow patrolman. He'd seen people killed by mages before. When it was obvious, it was wretchedly so. This was wretchedly so.
What he hadn't told his partner was that he didn't particularly want to call in reinforcements for two reasons. One he'd spoken; the mage was quite likely teleported off to gods-alone-knew-where.
The other, unsaid outside the quiet of his mind?
What would they do with the mage that'd fried people like this even if they caught him, her or it?
You lived longer in this line of work if you learned when to leave certain things alone.
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